Adolf
Loos is a paradigmatic figure in the history of the great architects of
the 20th century. While he is considered the revolutionary forerunner of
many theories that were later put into practice by the masters of the
Modern Movement, there has been a tendency to simplify the formal and
semantic aspects of his work to fit him better into a linear scheme of
history that sees a continuity of development from Ledoux to Le Corbusier
or from Morris to Gropius. If later studies have shown this to be a
methodological error caused by the hagiographic bias of historians such as
Philip Johnson or Sigfried Giedion in the case of the mythical masters of
the Modern Movement, it is, if possible, all the more so in the case of
Adolf Loos, who is, by definition, a contradictory, controversial and
unclassifiable figure. Only if we reduce Loos' architecture to the iconic
image of his white, unadorned façades can we find any evident analogy
with the works of the purest "international style". However, the
intellectual process by which Adolf Loos reached this formalisation bears
absolutely no resemblance to that of other masters of the Modern Movement1. As a result, Loos' architecture has long been
classified as 'pre-rationalist' and other conceptual and spatial
parameters that do in fact define and describe his work have been
disregarded. One such concept, formulated as a “poetics of otherness”
2 or poetics of contradiction,
justifies the inclusion of this article in a monograph on colour.

Contradiction as protection against societyLoos' architecture did not spring
from a desire to reinvent language constantly, the modus operandi by which
the avantgardes broke with the preceding aesthetics. Rather, it was a
lengthy design process, a slow succession of reflecting and putting into
practice, that finally led him to the creation of plastic forms which one
moment are near to those of other icons of modern architecture and the
next moment far from them. There are tangential points of contact in the
mute, white façades of Oud, Gropius or early Le Corbusier, but this is
not because Loos had any desire to be a militant modernist3: when modern architecture turned to transparency,
following the prophetic trail blazed by Paul Scheerbart's article on Glasarchitektur,
Loos stood fast and continued a rational process, designing according to
his own rules, which eventually distanced him from the weimarian architecture
of Taut, Gropius, Mies and many others. While the foremost architects were
covering their houses in glass, blurring the boundaries between inside and
outside, Loos was placing increasingly opaque and expressionless walls
between the home and the city. Both stances shared a design system that
was rooted in the interior and eventually manifested itself on the
exterior; they considered the interior more important, thus inverting the
academic composition procedure4. But while
the others wanted to enhance transparency with light envelopes and
generate a centrifugal spatial flow, Loos' only exterior expression of the
existence of a complex interior are the asymmetric openings. He conceived
centripetal architectures where the true essence is discovered by
penetrating the depths of the interior.

In order to understand Loos one must
understand his age, the turn of the century, and his city, Vienna. This
was a crucial period in central Europe. The social structures of the
aristocratic Ancien Régime were breaking down and the young scions of the
industrial bourgeoisie that had made this change possible were attempting
to define their identity through direct confrontation with the aesthetics
of the previous generation5. It was the time
of Art Nouveau and its national offshoots: modernisme, stile liberty,
jugendstil, sezession ... in all these movements the notion of
novelty, youth or liberty imbues even their name or slogan. The youth of
the bourgeoisie commissioned well-known architects to design their houses,
their interior decoration, even the clothes they should wear to fit in
with their setting. Loos caricatured their behaviour in his "Poor
Little Rich Man", where he recounts the excessive aesthetic zeal of
the Sezession architects: “[...] soon afterwards the architect
arrived to check that everything was in order and answer any difficult
questions. He entered the room. The owner went happily to greet him, as he
had many questions to ask. However, the architect did not notice the
owner's happiness. He had seen something quite different and blanched.
"What are those slippers you are wearing!" he exclaimed in a
pained tone of voice. The owner looked at his embroidered slippers and
breathed a sigh of relief. This time he was completely innocent: the
slippers were a faithful copy of the architect's original design . So he
answered with a superior air: "But Herr Architect, have you
forgotten?" You yourself designed these slippers!"
"Certainly!", thundered the architect, "but for the
bedroom! You are ruining the whole atmosphere with those two horrible
splashes of colour. Do you not realise?" The owner of the house saw
it immediately, quickly took off his slippers and was tremendously glad
that the architect did not find his socks impossible as well. They went to
the bedroom, where the rich man was able to put his slippers back on” 6. The moral is obvious: people may do as they
wish inside their own home without being subjected to the aesthetic
pressures of society. That is why Adolf Loos protects the inhabitants of
his houses with opaque, expressionless, abstract envelopes: to combat the
display of fatuous ornamentation that had proliferated with neo-baroque
ostentation all along the Ringstrasse in the 19th century and was
spreading throughout the city at that time with the sezessionists'
designs, to protect his occupants from prying eyes and to allow each and
everyone to decorate their houses as they wished.

Consequently, the outer walls in Loos'
architecture fulfil two functions: firstly, to protect the inhabitants
from the exterior and, secondly, to provide a background for each person's
expression of subjective bad taste in the interior7. In other words, they are physical and
psychological barriers. For Loos, the house is a temple of habitation, a
sacred place that must be protected from intruders and peeping eyes so
that a free life, unfettered by others, can be lived inside it. Loos
himself made this quite clear when he said: "The building should
be dumb on the outside and reveal its wealth only on the inside" 8.

Colour and materialsHis two most mature works, the
Moller house in Viena and the Müller house in Prague, provide the best
example of the contradiction between aseptic exteriors and colourful
interiors. In the Moller house the façades are radically at odds
with each other, incomprehensible unless analysed in terms of the
poetics of otherness. For the same reason, the white, colourless
expanses of the façade contrast with the colourful interiors with their
great wealth of materials. The façades are given a more or less abstract
character depending on the degree of public visibility. The street-facing
façade is a large, white, dumb expanse while the back, facing onto the
garden and only visible from inside the block, is absolutely conventional,
almost trivial. I believe that the poetics of contradiction are no such
thing, as the final result springs from a powerful, coherent body of
theory. There may be a formal contradiction between the façades but there
is none in the design method. We may or may not agree with it but the
presence of a theoretical framework to support it is undeniable.

The case of the Müller house is the
most paradigmatic as it is the culmination of the long road that began at
the Rufer house. Here, both the schizophrenia of the wall - white outside
and coloured inside - and the volumes of the interior reach a peak of
complexity and refinement. The four sides are all equally abstract because
all of them are visible from the street, from different angles. Continuing
the coherency of his design, he moves the abstract barriers of the house
onto all its faces and pours all the psychological and emotional content
into the spatial articulation and coverings of the interiors, thus
reinforcing the separation between the public exterior (profane) and the
private interior (sacred).

Loos' concept gives the building a markedly
emotive character in order to express the individual's entry into a
private, intimate world. To achieve this, he takes us on a carefully
studied route along a veritable architectural promenade from the
street to the depths of the house; in other words, he gives the
circulation areas great psychological value, manipulating them so that we
perceive the interior of the house gradually, in a controlled way. Each
interior space has its own proportions, related to its character and the
use to which it is to be put: he creates cells with different but
interconnected heights, achieving a certain autonomy while maintaining
their visual and functional relations. As a result, there is no uniform
ceiling height and the small differences in floor level are linked by
steps between functionally complementary zones. This spatial articulation,
known as Raumplan, is found almost exclusively on the main floor of the
house.

Loos excavates the interior of a pure prism
as though it were a cave, giving psychological and functional qualities to
each room: the form, proportions and finish of each space are designed to
convey a particular state of mind. In the Müller house this spatial
relationship is reinforced by the wall finishes in two areas. The living
and dining rooms are undoubtedly where Loos' best and most successful
interiors are to be found. The entrance leads into a tiny hallway,
followed by a narrow staircase. After the obligatory turn for heightened
theatricality, a large, luminous living room occupying the rear third of
the building opens our ahead. The heart of the house has been reached.
This vantage point offers a view of the living room and two flights of
stairs leading in different directions, one to the right and one to the
left. The living room is separated from the circulation area by an open
wall, practically reduced to the solid blocks that mark the rhythm of the
pillars. The clean, geometrical cuts in the wall afford a view of the
complex arrangement of stairs that organises routes and articulates
spaces, allowing a unitary perception of the different spaces. The dining
room, which is smaller, is in direct contact with the living room. It is
reached by the right-hand stairs, a flight of five steps that raises it
above the level of the living room. The difference in height marks the
different character of the two rooms: although connected spatially, they
fulfil different social functions. The living room is bigger and higher
because it is considered more public than the dining room, which has a
more intimate feel. It is in this definition of different atmospheres and
sensations that colour and claddings play an essential rôle:
cipolin marble from Sion in the living room and mahogany in the dining
room. But the veined green marble walls are merely the start of the
explosion of colour in these rooms: yellow curtains and a red hearth in
the living room, green curtains and the sienite table top in the dining
room.

A similar effect is achieved in the second
area of the house where the Raumplan is developed. The left-hand stairs
from the living room lead to the Müllers' private area, divided into two
clearly differentiated zones: the boudoir, well lit and clad in a light,
satiny wood and, three steps higher, the library, a more secluded space
which therefore has a lower ceiling and is clad in dark mahogany
panelling. The use of materials that are carefully selected for colour and
texture thus reinforces the private nature of the rooms, as each area of
the house is conceived in terms of the intended atmosphere. “[...]
the artist, the architect, first feels the effect he wishes to achieve
then, with the eye of the spirit, the spaces he wishes to create. The
effect that he wishes to have on the spectator, whether pure fear or
horror as in prison, the fear of God as in church, respect for the power
of the State as in the palace; pity as at a tombstone, a feeling of
comfort as at home or gaiety as in a tavern, is produced by the materials
and the form”9.
And unquestionably, I venture to add, by colour.

3.
En el artículo "Regla para el que construye en las montañas",
Loos escribe: "Construye lo mejor que puedas[...] No temas ser
tachado de inmoderno. Sólo se permiten cambios en la antigua manera de
construir si representan una mejora, si no, quédate con el antiguo. Pues
la verdad, aunque tenga cientos de años, tiene más relación íntima con
nosotros que la mentira que camina a nuestro lado", en Escritos II.
1910-1932, El Croquis Editorial, Madrid 1993, pp. 77-79./ In "Rules for Him [sic] who Builds in the
Mountains", Loos wrote: "Build as well as you can [...] Be not
afraid of being called unfashionable. Changes in the traditional way of
building are only permitted if they are an improvement. Other wise stay
with what is traditional, for truth, even if it be hundreds of years old,
has a stronger inner bond with us than the lie that walks by our
side". In Schezen, Roberto (q.v.), quoted at www.anneke.net/Loos/Paper.html